Bridge on the Barak cleared

Silchar, July 27: The state PWD has cleared the proposal for a new bridge across the Barak in this town.

The bridge, which will connect the two riverfronts, would be the fifth road bridge and second rail bridge over the Barak, the second longest river in the state.

Senior officials of the district PWD said the bridge, to be constructed on the eastern fringe of the town, would cost Rs 60 crore.

The funds would come from the non-lapsable central pool of resources, which is constituted by the mandatory 10 per cent of the annual plan outlay of the Centre for the Northeast and is granted by the DoNER ministry.

Sources said the Guwahati-based construction firm, DDS Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, had bagged the contract, the tender for which was floated on February 12.

The sources said the PWDís rural road division had faced no hassles in acquiring land for the project because of intervention by the districtís new deputy commissioner G.M. Hazarika.

PWD officials said the new bridge, to be built 23 metres from the districtís first 42-year-old cantilever road bridge, would be 555 metres long and would link Sadarghat and Rongpur localities across the Barak. The districtís lone airport in Kumbhirgram is at a distance of 24km.

The new bridge will be of a 12-metre width, of which the two-lane road part would be of 7.50 metre stretch from side to side.

N.R. Paul, an executive engineer of the district PWD, rural road division, said the commissioning of the bridge would take at least three years, considering the fact that there would be meagre amount of civil engineering work during the monsoon in the district.

He said the design and other drawings of the new bridge were yet to be finalised, and it would take at least six months.

The old bridge over the Barak at Sadarghat was commissioned in 1966 after a spell of about 10 years of delayed work, first undertaken by Sharma and Company of New Delhi and after a brief interregnum by another famed infrastructure firm Gammon India limited, based in Mumbai, is of a total length of 472 metres.